I've loved alcoholics/addicts for as long as I can remember. I've come to realize that it is a family trait and should be a family crest that I bear. I've wanted to "save them", "take them in", "love them like they'd never been loved before", "Fix them"......the list goes on and on. This is a blog about me walking the path that led to my understanding that, while I thought the people I loved were destructive, my relationships and how I interacted with them were also destructive. It is a blog about how I came to the realization that I was loving them to death and hurting myself, my child, my family and friends in the process. It is also a blog about how I started the process of recovery, am continuing to heal and continually trying to break the cycle in myself and my family. I feel this issue touches so many lives and speaking about our own experiences and hope for the future has healing power beyond belief.
After I turned my will and my life (along with my husband) over to the care of God as I understood Him, I continued to struggle with my decision. I was in the backyard one day with our dog and I remember asking God if separating from my husband was His will for my life, … More Signs from Above
Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes “Nothing changes if nothing changes, and if I keep doing what I’ve always done, I’ll keep getting what I’ve always got, and will keep feeling what I’ve always felt.” – Unknown Change is difficult for most of us. If you are in a situation where someone is hurting you … More How to set boundaries with someone who is hurting you emotionally, verbally, spiritually or physically
Here is my personal, condensed guide of how I thought while I worked through Steps One through Three in Al-Anon. Yours may be longer or shorter, it’s a personal journey and there is no wrong or right way to do this. Hard for me, because I’ve always made things more difficult than they needed to … More Al-Anon – Working the Steps -Steps One Through Three
Ah, how beautiful we women are! If only we knew, truly knew, exactly what we do to men. Oh, we know we are beautiful creatures. We knew it all along. We see the beauty in other women, but we seldom see it in ourselves. We, too, watch a beautiful woman walk down the street. In … More Awaken Your Mona Lisa
Sometime into my marriage, I had decided to stop praying, I decided to stop writing, I decided to stop going to church. None of them had done me any good that I could see and they hadn’t gotten me what I wanted in life so I felt the mature thing to do was to quit … More Choosing Your Path
The next morning, however, he would wake up in a terrible funk – and “the monster” would come stomping out of the bedroom with a disheveled, “grrrrr” about him. And my son and I would try to run and hide. We would perch ourselves in a corner atop a huge pile of proverbial eggshells and hold our breath. “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum”, around the corner he’d come. And we’d shake with fear and the eggshells would shatter beneath our feet. … More Walking On Eggshells
I have always cringed at the word codependent. It sounds so weak, so needy, sooo…helpless. None of those words are words I would use to describe myself. I see myself as a strong-willed, independent, problem-solver-type. “That’s it,” I thought early on in my marriage to an addict/alcoholic, “I’m not a codependent, I’m a problem-solver.”
This revelation didn’t make my life any easier, as addicts and alcoholics tend to be problem-makers and can send my problem-solving into overdrive. Once my wheels start turning on solving the problem at hand, I’ve been known to go to any lengths to find the solution. However, with my husband, there could be numerous problems on any given day, and if not today, tomorrow was always near. And somewhere along the line, I determined I’d figure all of them out single-handedly and nearly drove myself insane during our 10-year-marriage. … More Picket Fences
Emotional Health. When I hear this I think of so many things, self-esteem, self-worth, self-respect, self-control. But more importantly, I think emotional health has to do with our feelings and how we choose to express those feelings or not express them and how we act on our feelings or not act on them. All of … More Emotional Health
Healing The Pain That Binds Us 